EclipseLink DBWS has two parts: a design-time tooling component and a runtime provider component that takes a service descriptor (along with related deployment artifacts) and realizes it as a JAX-WS 2.0 Web Service. The runtime provider uses EclipseLink to bridge between the database and the XML SOAP Messages used by a Web Service client.

An DBWS service may be comprised of any number of operations of which there are 4 types:

Insert - inserts into the database persistent entities described by an XML document.

Delete - removes from the database persistent entities described by an XML document.

Query - retrieves from the database persistent entities described by an XML document. Selection criteria for Query operations can be specified by:

custom SQL

Stored Procedures

TopLink Expressions

JP-QL

The XML documents used by operations conform to an XML Schema Definition .xsd document auto-generated by the design-time tooling. Alternatively, if no .xsd is available, a pre-defined simple XML format (SXF) can be used.